Angel falls to Heaven

by Kurt Stenehjem

The following are excerpts from a book in progress, An Angel Falls To Heaven, being written by Kurt Stenehjem about his supply flights into Hillbilly Heaven, his week with the Pilgrims after his crash, his time in McCarthy waiting to recover the wreckage and his musings and observations of the family and the conflict. The book is full of drama, humor, romance, passion, and intrigue. Used by Permission. Copyright 2003

I don’t have the habit of reading the newspaper. I used to, but I’ve lost my stomach for it. I share a home with some friends who get the weekend editions of the local paper. That is how my eye was caught by a large photo of an even larger group of cowboy looking characters, many on horseback. The photo was emblazoned on the front page of the Sunday paper. I sat down, hooked, and read the multiple page story of a family in conflict with the National Park Service over access to the land they bought within the WrangellSt. Elias National Park. It became readily apparent to me that the local paper’s slant was less than positive toward what I learned was the Pilgrim family.

The fact that the local paper didn’t like them assured me these people were all right and I searched for a way I might find to help them. Mention was made at the end of the article that there was an airlift planned. Websites were listed for further information. Landrights.org sounded like just the folks who might know something about the airlift. I looked up the web site, got a phone number and was put in touch with a fellow named Ray Kreig. The airlift was to officially start over the weekend but supplies were being flown in already. I thought I would get out there early because the weather was looking good but there would be no telling what it might do in the next couple of days. The website was calling the airlift pilots “Angels of Mercy.” I’d never had an opportunity to be an angel before. This would be fun.

The next morning I loaded my Cessna 180 with survival gear and a few supplies for the Pilgrims. I set up my GPS for a direct course over the Chugach Mountains from Anchorage to McCarthy, two hundred sixty miles to the east. There was a palpable serenity in spite of the engine noise over such incredible topography. Glaciers lay out like oceans of snow. Peaks shrouded in clouds brought to mind marshmallow cream on a threemile high pile of ice cream. The ribbons of rock swept along by the ice floes resembled chocolate sauce swirls. Man, I was starting to get hungry.

The hour and fifty minute flight went by quickly. The ceiling started to drop as I approached McCarthy. I crossed over the village at about 6,500 feet, giving me a chance to check out the area and the airstrip. Rounding the corner I flew up McCarthy Creek. The lower buttresses of the Wrangell Mountains are some of the most dramatic rock structures I have ever seen. Scattered around these slopes were remnants of century old mining buildings. My mind boggled as I considered the human effort expended to put these buildings in such precarious and inaccessible places. It was as if there were wagers between crazy people as to who could build the most outrageous structure in the most ridiculous location. I’m not sure who won.

Below me a ribbon of road followed McCarthy Creek in places and left the creek to climb up and traverse rock slopes high above. There are some 17 river crossings and a number of small tunnels carved out by the rugged men who came here looking for fortune and adventure. Travers¬ing this roadbed would be the adventure of a lifetime for most.

Up the valley I could see a tin roof come into view. Surround¬ing the cabin were a number of dogs tied to posts, outbuildings scattered around and children playing in the yard. Beyond the cabin a strip of gravel, some 80 feet wide and 2,000 feet long, stretched out before me. I was descending into Hillbilly Heaven. The word Heaven in Biblical Hebrew is interpreted literally as “heaved up things.” If heaven is a place described as heaved up things, then this place is truly heaven on earth.

I touched down, rolled out and turned around to taxi back to a large horse-drawn wagon stationed on the side of the airstrip. Shutting down the airplane and climbing out I was greeted by a contingent of what looked like Civil War throwbacks, young men in country looking pants, mismatched jackets, almost shoulder length hair. Tufts of facial hair adorned the chins of the older boys, remind¬ing me of other old world religious followers who had never shaved a day in their lives. They introduced themselves with names straight out of the Old Testament. It would have been easier to keep track of which one was which if they had been named in Biblical chronological order but David was older than Moses and Moses was older than Job. I don’t know how Israel happens to be older than Noah but at least Noah was older than Abraham and Abraham was older than Jonathan but Joseph and Joshua were older than the other six. I was instantly confused but pleased in the warm and friendly greeting. I have made a habit of collecting friends with large homeschooled families so I wasn’t surprised by their confidence and eyeballtoeyeball connection with adults. The homeschooled children I have had the pleasure to meet do not seem to consider grownups as aliens from other planets. There seems to be no “teen age.”

The obvious patriarch of this clan came into view as he sauntered around the corner of the south end of the airstrip. In spite of his sixty some years, he seemed to be a man accustomed to work. Standing about six feet tall he was generally lanky with some of his early chest bulk redistributed to his belt area. He walked at a steady pace but with a slight limp, aided by a hand carved walking stick, the kind with a slight hook on the top end. It had a leather fob of some sort and leather fringes. He wore blue jeans and a disheveled blue work shirt, the top few buttons undone, exposing a not too white tee shirt underneath.

He looked to be more of a hippie throwback than something from the Civil War era, mostly because of his age being akin to that period of time. Razor or shears hadn’t touched his beard or head since the 60's, I was sure. A friendly and gracious man, he spoke with a casual southern drawl. There was a rasp in his voice. He spoke with a slight lisp for lack of some front teeth. You could not see words formed on his lips for a thick, long, gray moustache that matched his chest length beard shrouded them like baleen. I wondered how he could find his mouth with his fork.

He reached out and extended his hand. We shook. He introduced himself as Pilgrim. His children called him Papa. Exuding southern country charm, he welcomed me to Hillbilly Heaven and thanked me for coming. I felt at home.

After the greetings subsided and the plane was unloaded, the clan put their heads together and decided that Joshua and Moses would fly back out to McCarthy with me to drive a truck to Anchorage on a supply run. On the next load I would take Joseph and Israel out on the return flight so they could drive another truck to Glennallen to pick up supplies. On the third trip out I would take David and Job to help me load the plane on the McCarthy end. This was my introduction to the challenges of the management of such a large troupe and the awesome possibilities of being able to send out three contingents to accomplish such diverse tasks.

Empty of freight and loaded with two Pilgrims I started my shuttles back and forth from Hillbilly Heaven to McCarthy. It took about nine minutes of flight time and five minutes to load and unload on each end. The skies started out clear, but by the fourth and final load, high clouds were forming in the waning light of dusk and spitting an occasional snowflake my way. A pile of dry goods was growing under the tarp at the south end of the Hillbilly Heaven runway. I had a very satisfying feeling seeing the desperately needed supplies start to accumulate high in the Wrangells.

I parked the airplane and we unloaded the last load. I was led back to the family cabin for dinner and lodging. The trail crossed a stream that was bridged by an old timber that appeared to hearken back to the mining days of the early 1900's. The creek was about fifteen feet across but the creek bed had been ravaged by one hellacious flood in the last year or so. Seeing that wash out, I knew that this land lets humans live here begrudgingly.

The next morning I wanted to get an early start so I piled out of bed, pulled on my clothes and stumbled for the door. I was at my airplane preheating the engine at 7:30AM. It was exhilarating sitting in the cockpit, warming up, looking up the valley at sheer rock walls with frozen icefalls clinging to their sides. I taxied to the north end of the runway, doing my run up and checklist on the way. I spun the tail around and firewalled the throttle. The twin-bladed propeller grabbed at the cold mountain air and hurled me down the runway. Two hundred sixty five horses galloped in harness. Light on fuel and with minimal survival gear the aircraft jumped into the air. The southern departure took me down McCarthy Creek with the cabin just off to the left. I flew by doing 120 miles an hour, fifty feet higher than the cabin. I couldn’t imagine what it sounded like to those sleeping inside. The ground fell away fast as I cruised down the valley. It took less than nine minutes to make the 14mile trip and land at McCarthy Airstrip at the base of the valley.

David and Job were waiting for me there to help load supplies into the airplane. I tallied the weight of the sacks of dried goods as the boys passed them to me from the pile that they had assembled at the airstrip. We stacked in twelve or so sacks of flour, beans and popcorn into the Cessna 180. To top off the load we threw in fluffy stuff like quilts and toilet paper bales. I made about six trips before some of the children invited me to stop for breakfast.

It seemed Papa was quite curious about my motivations to fly in supplies for him and his family. I told him of my background in real estate and experiences with rightofway issues and bureaucracy. I also told him of some assumptions I had made about his beliefs and his family. The newspaper articles I had read gave me the impression that the Pilgrims had a large family because they saw children as a blessing from God. Their lack of TV, their simple life, their separateness were all hints that this family was taking the Scriptures very seriously and trying to apply them in a very practical, if not unique, way. I wanted to help them because I sensed they were people trying to follow God, which made them my brothers.

We talked about the conflict they found themselves in. Papa didn’t seem to understand why people were lining up against him and his family. I had a few ideas.

As I read the first full color cover story in the local Anchor¬age newspaper, I immediately picked up on a number of verbal land mines that the reporter had buried in his article. These I shared with Papa.

When the Territory of Alaska became a State it retained the mineral rights on land owned by the State. Thus the citizens of the State of Alaska own a stake in the vast oil reserves of the North Slope. Every year a portion of the proceeds of the sale of these minerals is divvied out to all residents who register to receive the “Permanent Fund Dividend.” Since its inception there has been animosity over the uses of those dividends and the eligibility for the dividend. Many Alaskans would hold the Pilgrims in contempt because of their relatively recent arrival and the sheer size of their clan, as they covet the large amount of cash the family would receive. If compared to the typical Alaskan family Papa and Country Rose’s brood of younger children plus their five independent adult offspring would be equivalent to six families who have thrown in together. It has always been shocking to me to see a Permanent Fund Dividend check casher defend his right to do whatever the heck he wants to do with his PFD, yet be Johnnyon thespot to criticize his neighbor for what he does with his. People can be a contentious lot. It appeared to me that the reporter mentioned Papa Pilgrim with a pocket full of $30,000 dollars in hundred dollar bills, just to fan the flames of jealousy among the other PFD recipients.

The fullpage wide photo of the Pilgrim clan on horse back in the heart of a National Park would set off the overcrowded earthers. Imagine the number of humans this virus could grow to if not cast out immediately. Their goal of twentyone children would send almost any reader over the edge.

Bible names like Joseph, David and Jonathan are common enough, but who could imagine naming their children Moses or Job or Lamb, for pity’s sake? Some whacked out religious nut!

Long hair on boys is one thing, but all those boys had a style no one would recognize as normal. It must be another weird religion thing.

Movie stars like Mike Douglas marrying young women is strange but hey, if he can get away with it, good for him! On the other hand, a 32yearold hippie marrying a 16-year old because she is strong and can make a bunch of babies is too much. Now he is 62 and she is 45 and still having kids, which just proves how wrong that is.

As one looks at all those people and horses living in the heart of a National Park it doesn’t take much imagination to consider the level of defilement the park will endure.

Anyone who drives a bull¬dozer through a park must be a lawbreaker.

One who hears directly from God must be insane.

Subsistence certainly shouldn’t be available for a bunch of New Mexico hippies that just showed up.

Virgin young adult children? Yeah, right! And what’s wrong with my kids not being virgins? Are you saying that there is something wrong with my kids?

Talk about repressed sexual feelings. Who but religious nuts would bathe with their clothes on? And what’s wrong with the human body that children shouldn’t look at it? It’s a thing of beauty, isn’t it?

Here you have a family that wants to cross park land and then they won’t let a college group cross their land just because the college kids camp in the nude sometimes. Talk about hypocrisy.

They won’t even let their own grandmother see the kids because they don’t want her influence to rub off on them. Those kids are being raised as cultural illiterates.

They don’t use the names of the days or the months? Good grief, why don’t they move to another country if they don’t want to speak English?

The Pilgrims say Alaska is the land of provision? Those are my salmon and moose they are eating!

Papa was shocked. He had read the article without realizing the hot buttons that would be pushed for many people over the many points the reporter was raising. “We think we are normal,” Papa said with a glazed look on his face. “A hundred years ago everyone lived like this. We know the world is different now but we never imagined these things would provoke people to hate us.”

Breakfast had taken more than an hour and a half and it was time to get back to work. Elishaba, Jerusalem, Noah, Abraham and I headed out to the airstrip. With the fast turnarounds it was decided that the Pilgrim “children” should just hang out at the wagon to help me unload.

It struck me that it was easy to forget that the six oldest “children” were actually adults. It is so uncommon to find young adults functioning as integral parts of a family. I think I was struggling to find a place to put them on my societal map. They were not children in the sense that they needed to be taken care of. They were not college kids laying a foundation for a career. They were not in the work force in the traditional sense as they were living a subsistence lifestyle. They were not in relationships with other young adultsas in dating or marriage. They were not parents of their own children yet they were parentsintraining, caring for their own siblings. I looked all over that societal map of mine and decided I would just have to draw in a whole new country. I think I’ll call it “Hillbilly Heaven.”

I took off and headed back down McCarthy Creek Valley. I don’t know what it is about us boys but we sure do love making noise. The children spun as they watched me zoom by.

The skies were a beautiful deep blue, the air was crisp. Flying up and down the valley I would occasionally spot a group of moose standing in wetlands on the east side of the drainage. With each trip I felt more comfortable with my surround¬ings. I would announce my approach from the east as I came out of the creek valley and announce turning final over the Common Air Traffic Frequency. No one else was flying. The airwaves were silent.

The pile of goods was shrinking at the McCarthy airstrip; the pile was growing at the end of the Hillbilly Heaven airstrip. This was going real well.

The “boys” in McCarthy handed me more sacks of flour and some whole grain wheat, which we stacked in the airplane. We topped the load off with some blankets and clothes stuffed in garbage bags. I hopped in, buckled my threepoint seat belt with inertial reel shoulder harness, called my departure on CATF and took off for the homestead.

I climbed up the valley, enjoying the scenery along the way. The airstrip is lined up so the approach is directly over the cabin where the Pilgrims live. The creek drainage is off to the west and free of trees, so I made my descent flying up the creek drainage. A slight right turn was required to swing around the trees on the south end of the runway and line up with the touch down zone.

I had two notches of flaps and had slowed to sixty miles an hour. As I got close to the touch¬down point I pulled another notch of flaps to slow the aircraft and flare the landing.

I touched down smoothly. My tires spooled up from a dead stop to match the forward speed of the airframe.

Milliseconds after the wheels made contact, the left landing gear snapped off along the top two axle mounting bolts. The tire, spinning at full speed, took off down the runway, scooting away from the aircraft, which was still slowing down from the touchdown.

A tremendous noise erupted inside the cockpit as the solid steel gear leg dug a furrow six inches deep in the dirt.

As the forward speed bled off, the drag induced by the left gear leg grinding in the dirt caused the plane to veer violently to the left. With the plane spun almost ninety degrees to the direction of travel and not yet run out of forward momentum, the right gear stuck firm in the gravel, twisting under the fuselage and tearing from its mooring.

The fuselage then dropped to the ground, the propeller still spinning, both blades striking the earth. They bent like aluminum spoons.

The right wing tip struck the ground and bent up to the length of the aileron.

The tail wheel, also perpen¬dicu¬lar to the direction of travel, folded under causing the right horizontal stabilizer to hit the dirt, chewing it up. This caused the empennage to stress just behind the extended baggage bulkhead, tearing it near full around and leaving the entire tail section attached to the rest of the empennage only by control cables and about six inches of sheet aluminum.

Then the noise stopped.

I sat there in disbelief. I had no idea the gear had snapped and the wheel had left me. I could not imagine how I could have been forced sideways so violently.

Sitting on the wagon waiting for my return were Elishaba, Hosanna and Noah. All eyes were on the airplane as I made my approach. At the moment of touchdown they saw the wheel break free and speed past them. Blinding terror rose up in Elishaba that the plane would nose over and cart wheel down the runway, crushing me inside.

Frozen with horror they watched the plane being thrown hard to the left. Then, as if in slow motion, their senses were assaulted as they watched the Cessna coming apart, the right gear collapsing, the right wing striking the ground, the tail wheel being ripped over, then the tail violently striking the ground. The sound of metal plowing through gravel was replaced by the indescribable cacophony from the tearing and crumpling of aluminum.

And then, deafening silence.

This angel just fell to Heaven.

The Pilgrims have the habit of carrying little walkietalkies. Running toward the wreck, Elishaba paused and called Papa and Country Rose back at the cabin. “He crashed, I can’t believe it, he crashed!” She saw me unbuckling and climbing out, and exclaimed, “He’s all right, he’s all right!” She stood there not knowing what to do; the thought of fire flashed through her mind. She waited, thinking, “He can get clear of the wreckage sooner if we stay here.”

Hosanna watched in horror as she exclaimed, “Oh my God, Oh my God, he crashed.” Noah could not believe his eyes as he watched the airplane come apart. Tears streamed down his face. I opened the door and piled out. Looking upon the faces of the Pilgrims there, I knew they were very shaken. I put my arm around Noah, hugged him and assured him I was all right. His tender young heart was buoyed. He stopped crying.

Papa had just picked up the phone and was dialing a reporter in Anchorage when he heard the radio transmission from Elishaba. “He just crashed!” she exclaimed.

“What did you say?” Papa radioed back.

“He just crashed,” she repeated. “He’s all right.”

How could he crash his plane and be all right? Papa queried in his mind. The two thoughts seemed incomprehensible in the same sentence. He couldn’t believe his ears, but he knew he could rely on Elishaba for the truth.

Papa was near weeping as he ran out of the cabin toward the airstrip, limping slightly because of his bad knee. Visions of smoke rushed through his head. He knew he would know the severity of the crash as soon as he rounded the corner, just past the creek. Jerusalem raced out in front of Papa, but stopped when she thought about his physical condition. I mustn’t leave Papa in case something happens to him. Together they hurriedly walked to the accident. When they got to the corner, they saw the Pilgrim children and me unloading the freight from wreckage. That sight told him immediately that everything was all right. “This is good,” he said to himself, “This is reasonable. No smoke.” His heart leaped.

Papa approached me, his voice trembling. “Are you all right?” He hugged me, crying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s just a piece of metal; I’m all right,” I tell him, wanting to put his heart at ease.

Papa told me later that the Bible verse from Mark 8:36, which quotes Jesus, popped into his mind. “For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own life.” He had a sense that my priorities were straight, that my heart was not all wrapped up in my airplane. That sense about me would play heavily in the week to come.

I can assure you, I would have my moments over my loss later…

Elishaba confided in me that the feeling she experienced most was hurt, deep hurt as she saw my beautiful Cessna crumple before her eyes. She knew that I was there risking my life and losing my airplane as a direct result of the NPS blockade. She was incensed by the “ungodly oppression” of the NPS denying them their God-given, federal and state constitutionally guaranteed, lawful right to operate vehicles on the McCarthy Green Butte Road to their home.

Papa told me that Wrangell St. Elias National Park Superintendent Gary Candelaria knew last summer that the Pilgrims were running out of supplies. Candelaria was intentionally squeezing them by refusing their right of passage. He even refused granting them a temporary emergency permit. The risk of catastrophe the Pilgrims were forced into had just become a severe loss of property and narrowly missed a tragic loss of life. Papa’s frustration was now growing into anger over my unnecessary, substantial loss.

An hour after the crash, the reporter who wrote the original Anchorage newspaper stories about the Pilgrims “just happened to call” asking about the progress of the airlift. We wondered if he had heard about the accident somehow. Papa shared with him details of the flights prior to mine and of the loads I had brought in, but did not mention the mishap. The writer didn’t bring it up so we concluded he did not in fact know about it. The senior Pilgrim was irritated because he sensed his clan’s peculiarities were being used to confuse the reader’s understanding of public access rights within national parks. If the main line Press could demonize the people using the road, they could get public opinion to support the blockade of the road. Armed with his new insight into how he believed the author of these “news stories” was manipulating Americans Papa was not willing to give the journalist any more ammunition to use against his family. The conversation ended cordially.

This was the dawning of a new era for Papa Pilgrim. For the first time, he had an awareness that he was being manipulated and used for some devious purpose. For the first time, he did not tell the press everything they wanted to know, assuming they would treat him fairly. For the first time, he took control of his life that had, without his consent, gone public.